Author: jerobear
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Flevans: A Short Distance To Fall
Flevans is a multi-instrumentalist, DJ and, according to his Bandcamp, with an “accessible style” that straddles funk, breaks, soul and electronica. That really saves writing any review, because that’s about what it is. Still, we get paid by the word so … It’s a really good album, nudging in as our contender for album of…
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Percy: Monorail
Percy are excellent. They’re billed as post-punk, but they’re merely old school punks, in the sense that they don’t really care about conventions and have a good sense of melody. Don’t expected Damned-style sonic assaults (which were, speak it softly, always a bit rubbish) or more modern punk with punch-in-the-face snare and kickdrum; the band…
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Jake Rodrigues: Lucky Spoon
We played this a couple of times before anyone hit the nail on the head, and that was (inadvertently) a grumpy chum, repeating the complaint of the elderly that old music is better, but like a stopped clock occasionally correct, specifically, of Radio Two: “Every song was a reminder of how pop music was; simple…
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Sam Redmore: Universal Vibrations
We’re back in the 80s with this; it’s very much of the era when Madonna was big, and so we get walking basslines, Latin percussion, funk, soul and people blowing whistles, the music simply for dancing and not categorising. If you’re a fan of soul / disco from back then, this is for you. It’s…
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The Communards: Red
Bonus tracks can be a bit annoying, a classic album ruined by the bolting-on of outtakes and demos you don’t really care about – but not in this case, the bonus tracks adding gravitas to what might be seen as purely a pop/dance album. The Communards formed in 1985 after singer Jimmy Somerville left Bronski…
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Luke Sital-Singh: Dressing Like A Stranger
We liked Luke Sital-Singh’s early material but found his last album a disappointment, something that in turn was itself disappointing, as he can be good. He said thank you on Twitter for the poor review, and we’re assuming he was not merely being sarcastic but had a wake-up call, and this new album is really…
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The Kooks: 10 Tracks to Echo in the Dark
The title is the most interesting thing about this largely forgettable new album from The Kooks. It’s surprising that they’re still going; most of the bands of their ilk (landfill indie being that ilk, the term coming from the fact that people joked that most albums would end up as landfill) having disappeared, so well…
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Mean Mary: Portrait of a Woman (Part I)
This album is so good we forgot to review it; we played it and played and got to know it so well we thought we’d written about, but we never did. It is, as one might expect, really good. Mary James is basically a country singer, leading on her banjo, but if you can tolerate…
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State Choir Latvija: Sempiterna, Choral music by Rhona Clarke
The works on this album range over 30 years of composing for Clarke. The sleeve notes say that Clarke was 15 when she joined the Lindsay Singers, a female-voice choir in Dublin and sang during her time as student in University College Dublin and her PhD studies at Queen’s University Belfast. “This long engagement with…
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